Evil scientists have just announced plans to bleed the NHS dry by forcing taxpayers to fund wizened old selfish harlots in their quest to swamp the country with bespoke, trophy babies. Actually, all that really happened was this: the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) announced it was recommending the extension of NHS IVF fertility treatment to women aged between 40 and 42, in recognition of new research suggesting they would benefit. But you wouldn't have been able to tell that, given the hostility of responses on radio phone-ins and internet comment sections.
What is it about fertility treatment that causes so much rage? The arguments of the furious protesters are well worn, namely that having a baby is a selfish lifestyle choice, not a right, and that non life-threatening ailments have no place being offered by a public health service that is trembling under the raised boot of a government demonstrably committed to wrecking it.
Given that the majority of NHS treatments are for non life-threatening ailments, including an increasing number of self-inflicted problems, this seems curious. The number of individuals seeking fertility treatment, either from the NHS or privately, is relatively small. NHS Devon for example treated 396 people between 2008 and 2010, offering them one cycle of IVF, at a total cost of £1m over three years. In comparison to the amount NHS trusts spend on emerging lifestyle ailments such as alcohol abuse, smoking or obesity, that figure is a drop in the ocean.
If there's something medically wrong with an individual, and modern science has a solution to assist them, why would we object? Regardless of which partner has the fertility problem, it's the woman who must undergo the physical and emotional stress of IVF, and one can't help sensing a background hum of misogyny in some of the voices raised in protest at their publicly funded treatment. Why did these women leave it so late, they cry; who are they to think they can swan about enjoying careers and then come running to the doctor when they find cobwebs jamming their biological clocks?
This is, of course, codswallop. There's little evidence that the small rise in age limit will see the wine bars of Hampstead suddenly empty of fortysomething, chain-smoking, female investment bankers, too busy and self obsessed to have had children, as they hurry to have that fertilised egg implanted at the taxpayers' expense. There are endless events and circumstances resulting in infertility, and age is only one of them. The new upper age limit recognises that many couples behave socially responsibly by waiting until they feel financially stable enough to start a family or until a relationship is secure, and thus discover their medical problems at a later stage. Same-sex couples may also have problems in delayed diagnosis given that their plans to have children can often be complicated.
Singling out IVF to be the front-runner of a deserving and undeserving health service is an unpalatable notion. To remain an effective, free at point of delivery service, the NHS must work hard to maintain the non-judgmental equality of its provision. To erode that leads us into ugly territory, where we question whether we should stitch Darren's ear back on again after his third drunken brawl of the month, or provide a mobility scooter for a 23-stone fast food devotee. That way lies a diminution of essential values that most of us cherish.
The reality is that non-fertile men and women across the country, of all races, classes and sexual orientation, have had broken hearts mended with the help of medical science, and this should be cause for celebration rather than concern.
And as for one radio phone-in guest who complained about IVF creating more feral, antisocial mouths to feed, one can only feel sympathy. Who can fail to be concerned about the growing numbers of 48-year-old unemployed lesbians next door and their violent IVF asbo twins? Oh, for pity's sake, grow up.
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